War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
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The Philosophical Journal of Conflict and Violence Vol. V, Issue
2/2021 © The Authors 2021 Available online at
http://trivent-publishing.eu/
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
Pierre Ponchon
Abstract
This paper intends to confront Plato’s thought on war and enmity in
Laws 1 (625c-628e) to those of Thucydides and Heraclitus showing
that Clinias’ thesis that the state of perpetual war is the
principle of legislation has a deep similarity with some aspects of
their political thoughts. Next, I investigate how the refutation by
the Athenian Stranger of the place and status of war and conflict
at the root of political realism is a key argument in the whole
process of the Laws and in the emergence of the platonic meaning of
political philosophy. Keywords
Plato; Heraclitus; Thucydides; Laws; war; civil war; legislation.
DOI: 10.22618/TP.PJCV.20215.2.114003
The PJCV Journal is published by Trivent Publishing
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
Pierre Ponchon
Abstract
This paper intends to confront Plato’s thought on war and enmity in
Laws 1 (625c-628e) to those of Thucydides and Heraclitus showing
that Clinias’ thesis that the state of perpetual war is the
principle of legislation has a deep similarity with some aspects of
their political thoughts. Next, I investigate how the refutation by
the Athenian Stranger of the place and status of war and conflict
at the root of political realism is a key argument in the whole
process of the Laws and in the emergence of the platonic meaning of
political philosophy. Keywords
Plato; Heraclitus; Thucydides; Laws; war; civil war;
legislation.
Introduction
Scholars surprisingly neglect the opening pages of Plato’s Laws.
Except in some studies about the problem of the unity of virtue,
they are only mentioned in order to indicate Plato’s hostility to
war and are merely considered as a kind of prelude to the prelude.1
However, it seems reasonable to think that these pages deserve more
attention: first because they present a major argument of political
philosophy concerning the role of war for a city, and, secondly,
because their position, at the very beginning of the dialogue,
could be a mark of the relevance of this argument for the
development of Plato’s position. Actually, in these first lines,
Plato rejects the hypothesis that war is the principle of the
polis. This hypothesis is not quite usual for this period2: even if
it is endorsed like obvious in the dialogue by Clinias the Spartan
and by
1 For instance, Michael John O’Brien, The Socratic Paradoxes and
the Greek Mind (Chapel Hill University of North Carolina Press,
1967), 180–185. On the political issue of war in Plato see in
particular Angela Hobbs, “Plato on War,” in Maieusis, ed. Dominic
Scott (Oxford University Press, 2007), 176–93; Arlene W.
Saxonhouse, “An Unspoken Theme in Plato’s Gorgias: War,”
Interpretation 11/2 (1983): 139–69; Jean-Marie Bertrand, “De la
stasis dans les cités platoniciennes,” Cahiers du Centre Gustave
Glotz 10/1 (1999): 209–24; Jill Frank, “Wages of War: On Judgment
in Plato’s ‘Republic,’” Political Theory 35/4 (August 2007):
443–67. Note that in the latter article, the issue is also the
parallelism between soul and city. On this topic, see also Trevor
J. Saunders, “The Structure of the Soul and the State in Plato’s
Laws,” Eranos 60 (1962): 37–55. The main exception is Aldo
Brancacci, “Giustizia, guerra e guerra civile nelle Leggi di
Platone,” in Studi in ricordo di Antonio Filippo Panzera, vol. 3
(Bari: Caccucci Editore, 1995), 1073– 89. 2 Contrary to a commonly
acknowledged idea, Peter T. Manicas, “War, Stasis, and Greek
Political Thought,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 24/4
(October 1982): 673–88, has shown that the
Pierre Ponchon
36
Megillos the Cretan, it is an idea that had been the object of deep
theoretical elaborations that Plato seems to know and to refer to
quite precisely, although, as it is usually the case for prose
writers in the Laws, he does not explicitly mention their
authors.3
Let us briefly summarize the content of these neglected pages:
after a brief introduction concerning the divine origin of the
Cretan and Spartan constitutions, the Athenian Stranger proposes to
search “the object which the lawgiver had in view when he ordained”
his laws
(κα πνθ' νομοθτης πρς τοτο βλπων συνετττετο, 625e). According to
Clinias and Megillos this object is war, and Clinias, in a speech
that exposes the main thesis of what is now generally called
“political realism,”4 explains why war should be regarded as such a
principle of legislation. Then, the Athenian Stranger “brings back
the thesis to its principle”
(τν γρ λγον π' ρχν ναγαγν, 626d): “all men are both publicly and
privately the
enemies of all, and individually also each man is his own enemy” (τ
πολεμους εναιπντας
πσιν δημοσ τε, κα δ κστους ατος σφσιν ατος, 626e). At this point
the Athenian Stranger develops his refutation through two main
arguments: a political one based on the distinction between stasis
(civil war) and polemos (external war) (626e-628e); and an ethical
one based on an analysis of complete virtue (629a-631b) that I will
not examine here.
In this paper, I would like to show: (1) that this passage is
directed against a specific political tradition: Plato implicitly
refers to two important thinkers, Thucydides and Heraclitus; (2)
that these two thinkers will be a polemical target recurrently in
the Laws, specifically when war is at stake; (3) that Plato’s
answer to Thucydides and Heraclitus is mainly on a political level,
but also provides significant metaphysical insights attacking the
very foundations of political realism. In order to demonstrate
these points, I will identify the polemical features against
Thucydides; then I will look at the Heraclitean traces and lastly I
will consider Clinias’ political refutation.
I. Plato against Thucydides
Plato never mentions the name of Thucydides in his whole work. But
there are several clues indicating that he very likely read him and
sometimes discussed his main thesis, at least starting
conception of a permanent state of war is not frequent in the
ancient world (see ibid., 677–678). In Protagoras 322b, the origin
of the polis is the threat of wild beasts, not war; in Republic II
369b, it is the pressure of needs. But it is necessary to
distinguish between empirical origin of the polis and the purpose
of the legislation: the former is the set of external conditions
that lead men to associate in a polis; the latter is what the
lawgiver has in view when he ordains his constitutional laws. 3 The
problem also exists for the materialists of Book 10. Is Plato
referring to Democritus or to another thinker, as Antiphon. See Ada
Neschke-Hentschke, Platonisme politique et théorie du droit naturel
: contribution à une archéologie de la culture politique
européenne. Volume I. Le Platonisme politique dans l’antiquité
(Paris: Éditions Peeters, 1995), 140-152. This anonymity could be
the result of a synthesis made by Plato: no one is mentioned
because the theory mixes several features from different origins.
In our case, it merges the militarist views of oligarchic Sparta
with Thucydidean and Heraclitean features. 4 The term is a modern
one, even if it is often applied to Thucydides. See Gregory Crane,
Thucydides and the Ancient Simplicity: the Limits of Political
Realism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998), 28–71;
Neville Morley, “Contextualism and Universalism in Thucydidean
Thought,” in Thucydides and Political Order. Concepts of Order and
the History of the Peloponnesian War, ed. Christian R. Thauer and
Christian Wendt (New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 23–40. See
also the definition of Peter J. Ahrensdorf and Thomas Pangle,
Justice Among Nations: On the Moral Basis of Power and Peace
(Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999): “Indeed, insofar as
‘realism’ means the attempt to understand political life by
focusing on the actual behavior of political communities rather
than on how they ought to behave, Thucydides would seem to be the
classic of realism” (13). The existence of a state of war between
States or cities and the rule of the strongest as the very basis of
political relationships are two of the major theses of political
realism.
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
37
from the time he wrote the Menexenus.5 In the Laws, however, the
lack of any explicit reference is less surprising, because, except
for poets such as Theognis or Tyrtaeus, or very ancient lawgivers
such as Solon or Lycurgus, he never mentions any thinker6.
Thucydides, nevertheless, be he implicitly present or not, allows
us to better understand the argument of Clinias’ speech.
A. The Principles of Ancient “Political Realism”
Many Thucydidean features are identifiable in the speech of
Clinias:
And herein, as I think, he condemned the stupidity of the mass of
men in failing to perceive that all are involved ceaselessly in a
lifelong war against all States. […] For (as he would say) “peace,”
as the term is commonly employed, is nothing more than a name, the
truth being that every State is, by a law of nature, engaged
perpetually in an informal war with every other State.7
Now, even if the claim that the legislation of a city is
established on the consideration of war is not, as it stands, a
Thucydidean one,8 it is based on two main points clearly outlined
in Thucydides: (1) it comes from the initial situation in which
each city finds itself—a state of permanent war, that is a war that
never ends in time, nor in space9; (2) this universal war is
said to be natural (κατ φσιν). I would like to argue that both of
these statements are major claims of ancient political realism,
traditionally connected to Thucydides.
5 On this topic see Raymond Weil, “L’Archéologie” de Platon (Paris:
Klincksieck, 1959). Regarding the third book of the Laws, see
Cynthia Farrar, “Putting History in Its Place: Plato, Thucydides,
and the Athenian Politeia,” in Politeia in Greek and Roman
Philosophy, ed. Melissa Lane and Verity Harte (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 2013), 32–56. Regarding the myth of the Atlantis
as a rewriting
of Thucydides, see Jean-François Pradeau, Le monde de la politique
: sur le récit atlante de Platon, Timée (17– 27) et Critias, (Sankt
Augustin: Academia Verlag, 1997), 185 ff. On the Menexenus, see
Nicole Loraux,
L’Invention d’Athènes : histoire de l’oraison funèbre dans la ‘cité
classique’, (Paris: Payot Rivages, 1993). Gerald M. Mara, The Civic
Conversations of Thucydides and Plato: Classical Political
Philosophy and the Limits of Democracy (Albany, NY: SUNY Press,
2008) outlines many proximities, in particular with the Gorgias and
the Republic. For a more skeptical position, see Terence H. Irwin,
“Plato: The Intellectual Background,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Plato, ed. Richard Kraut (Cambridge University Press, 1992), 51–89;
58–63 and especially note 37, 82. 6 The main reference here is the
famous passage of Laws, X, 889b-e. According to the arguments of
Catherine H. Zuckert, “Plato’s Laws: Postlude or Prelude to
Socratic Political Philosophy?,” The Journal of Politics 66/2 (May
2004): 374–95, this absence is all the more comprehensible since
Plato would try to avoid every explicit reference to something
occurring after the Persian Wars, for the sake of the dramatic
situation of the dialogue. 7 Plato, Laws, I. 625e-626a: νοιαν δ μοι
δοκε καταγνναι τν πολλν ς ο μανθανντων τι πλεμος
ε πσι δι βου ξυνεχς στι πρς πσας τς πλεις· […] ν γρ καλοσιν ο
πλεστοι τν νθρπων
ερνην, τοτ εναι μνον νομα, τ δ ργ πσαις πρς πσας τς πλεις ε πλεμον
κρυκτον κατ
φσιν εναι. All translations of the Laws in this paper are from
Plato, Laws, trans. Robert Gregg Bury (Cambridge: Harvard
University Press, 1984). 8 One can imagine that it is a sophistic
proposition. But we do not have any testimony of it in the extent
corpus of the sophists. Thrasymachus, for instance, who develops in
Republic I, 338c-ff a realistic argumentation on power, never
mentions the question of international relationships in his
arguments on the nature of the different kinds of constitutions. As
it is, this proposition of the relevance of war in the legislation
is peculiar to Plato’s Laws. But it borrows many features of its
argumentation to Thucydides and Heraclitus, as I will try to show.
9 It is a kind of war of all against all, among cities. On the
influence of Thucydides on Hobbes, see, in particular, Gabriella
Slomp, “Hobbes, Thucydides and the Three Greatest Things,” History
of Political Thought 11 (1990): 565–86; Manicas, “War, Stasis, and
Greek Political Thought,” 676–678.
Pierre Ponchon
38
Thucydides is the one who insists on the extension of the
Peloponnesian war both in time and in space. At the very beginning
of his book, he insists that this war “was the greatest movement
that had ever stirred the Hellenes, extending also to some of the
Barbarians, one
might say even to a very large part of mankind” (κνησις γρ ατη
μεγστη δ τος λλησιν
γνετο κα μρει τιν τν βαρβρων, ς δ επεν κα π πλεστον νθρπων, I,
1.1). The spatial universality of this war comes with universality
in time that includes the so-called peace period. In the second
preface, in the fifth book, he writes:
But at last they were forced to break the treaty which had been
concluded after the first ten years, and again engaged in open war.
[…] If anyone shall not deem it proper to include the intervening
truce in the war, he will not judge aright. For […] he will find
that that can not fitly be judged a state of peace in which neither
party restored or received all that had been agreed upon
[…].10
The opposition between open war (ς πλεμον φανερν) and informal war
(κρυκτος
πλεμος) is how Thucydides, unlike his contemporaries, explains the
continuity of the Peloponnesian war.11 As for Clinias, this
opposition allows Thucydides to think about a real continuity of
war behind alternating periods of peace and war, and offers him the
way to explain the usual belief in peace. This idea of a silent
war, invisible for the many, is clearly the way Thucydides
understands the so-called “peace of Nicias.”
One might object that there is a difference between a thirty-year
war between two great coalitions and Clinias’ theory of a continual
war among all states, and that Clinias appears to be more radical
than Thucydides. However, war plays a great role in the whole
History of the Peloponnesian War. It is in fact omnipresent in the
fifty years during which Athens builds its Empire (I, 89–118), but
it also seems to be at work during the entire prehistory (the
passage known as the “archaeology”, I, 2–18, where war is the way
by which civilizations grow, for instance the Crete of Minos, or
the coalition around Mycenae before the Trojan War), so that it
seems to be, if not the only reality, at least the first and
principal one for human societies.12 In a sense, here too, peace is
just a specious name and a mere appearance.
Not only does Thucydides conceive war as universal, but he also
considers it as the very structure of political reality. By and
large, according to Thucydides, the necessities of an actual or
ongoing war inform how political leaders envision (and make
decisions about) the future of their city. Peace never appears as a
horizon for them, but at best as a temporary truce. They thus
deliberate as if war were present or about to happen, even in times
of peace.13 Moreover,
10 Thucydides, V.25.3-26.2: πειτα μντοι κα ναγκασθντες λσαι τς μετ
τ δκα τη σπονδς αθις
ς πλεμον φανερν κατστησαν. κα τν δι μσου ξμβασιν ε τις μ ξισει
πλεμον νομζειν, οκ
ρθς δικαισει. τος τε γρ ργοις ς διρηται θρετω κα ερσει οκ εκς ν
ερνην ατν κριθναι,
ν οτε πδοσαν πντα οτ πεδξαντο ξυνθεντο. Translation by Charles
Foster Smith, in Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, ed.
Charles Forster Smith (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1962).
11 The word κρυκτος (“without heralds”), which Thucydides uses as a
criterion in I, 146 to distinguish open warfare from the moment
that precedes it, is the very term Plato uses for “informal
warfare” in Clinias’ speech. 12 Christian Meier, The Greek
Discovery of Politics (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1990),
179 and note 112. Meier explains that “war” in Thucydides is
probably the only example of “subjectivation” of a political
concept at that time, which is a sign of its relevance. For a
different view of the importance of war at this time, see Manicas,
“War, Stasis, and Greek Political Thought,” 675. 13 A good example
is the decision of Themistocles to rebuild the walls of Athens,
despite the proposition of Sparta (I.90). Themistocles, the most
far-sighted of the leaders (I, 138, 3), shows that he doesn’t
believe in justice and peace, but waits for war.
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
39
their decisions rest upon a general principle the Athenians in
Thucydides express repeatedly.14 For instance, before the outbreak
of war, the Athenian ambassadors in Sparta explain the constitution
of their empire, claiming:
Thus there is nothing remarkable or inconsistent with human nature
in what we also have done […] but it has ever been an established
rule that the weaker is kept down by the stronger.15
The Athenians put forward a kind of natural law whose consequence
is the war of all against all, for the stronger has to prove his
strength by war.16 An anthropological feature can then explain the
universality of war: the rule of the stronger over the weaker. I
argue that this
explains the “law of nature (κατ φσιν)” Clinias talks about in the
passage of the Laws quoted earlier. In another passage, the famous
Melian debate, the Athenians also refer to the rule of
the strongest as a “necessity of nature” (π φσεως ναγκαας, V, 105,
2). Here, the term of “nature” refers, it seems, not only to human
nature but to a more general principle also applying to gods (V,
105), so that it concerns all beings.17
B. Human Nature and War
However, Thucydides focuses on human nature and he proceeds to
establish a specific link between polemos (external war) and stasis
(civil war). This is a well-known topic of the History of the
Peloponnesian war. In the excursus following the description of the
civil war at Corcyra, Thucydides notes that stasis and polemos are
connected (III, 82, 1). He emphasizes three main points: the
savagery of stasis, its universal diffusion during the conflict,
and its link with war (polemos). Such a link can be traced to human
nature itself:
but war, which robs men of the easy supply of their daily wants, is
a rough schoolmaster and creates in most people a temper that
matches their condition.18
For him war is undoubtedly not only the principle of stasis
(meaning the starting point of stasis and of the inflation of
stasis in the whole Hellenic world), but also a principle of human
nature, because it molds the temper of people on itself.
14 The question of whether Thucydides endorsed the positions of
political realism or condemned it is difficult and highly
controversial. He always put it in the mouth of a speaker and never
explicitly endorsed it. Nevertheless, the principles of political
realism also appear to be a major key to his interpretation of the
facts (see the true cause of the war, in I.23.6). 15 Thucydides, I,
76, 2: οτως οδ μες θαυμαστν οδν πεποικαμεν οδ π το νθρωπεου
τρπου
[…]λλ αε καθεσττος τν σσω π το δυνατωτρου κατεργεσθαι. 16 See also
V, 105 and V, 89. These crude and frank expressions of the
principle of political realism have to be seen in relation to the
state of the debate: the many are absent and the few can speak
openly. As in Clinias’ speech (625e), this is a principle unknown
to the “stupid mass.” Peace is then a specious name and a mere
appearance that deceives the many but less wise, whereas the few
but more enlightened understand that by nature city-states try to
rule each other through war. 17 Leo Strauss, The Argument and the
action of Plato’s Laws (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1975), p. 4, noted the proximity with “what the Athenian
ambassadors on Melos assert.” In the Gorgias,
Callicles speaks explicitly to a law of nature (κατ νμον γε τν τς
φσεως, 483e), but : (1) he does not make the link between this law
and universal war; (2) in this dialogue too, there are implicit
references to Thucydides (e.g., 519a), so that this law of nature
may be reminiscent of Thucydides’ conception. 18 Thucydides , III,
82, 2 : δ πλεμος φελν τν εποραν το καθ μραν βαιος διδσκαλος
κα
πρς τ παρντα τς ργς τν πολλν μοιο.
Pierre Ponchon
40
Actually, the proximity and the difference between polemos and
stasis play an important role in the refutation of war as a
principle by Plato in the beginning of the Laws. The Athenian
Stranger establishes two points: first, the continuity between
polemos and stasis, so that stasis is the archè of polemos (and
primarily stasis inside ourselves)19; and second, a difference of
moral value between the two, so that stasis is both more violent
and more condemned. The second point is commonplace in Ancient
Greece, even if the way Plato exploits it is quite original. The
first point, however, is not as common, and, as I have just argued,
can be traced to a Thucydidean origin.
Moreover, this implicit—and often critical—reference to a
Thucydidean conception of war will be developed in other parts of
the Laws.20 Thucydides is, for instance, an important target in the
third book, where Plato gives an account of the beginning of
humanity, and rewrites with a touch of irony and of parody the
“archaeology of Thucydides,”21 showing how, contrary to the results
of the historian’s inquiry, war and conflict were impossible in the
early stages of humanity, because of the oblivion of metallurgy and
the absence of enmity between men.22
II. Plato against Heraclitus
Several explicit occurrences of Heraclitus can be found in Plato’s
works, but none of them in the Laws, because, as explained before,
Plato did not name any philosophers in this dialogue. But the
relevance of Heraclitus for Plato is clearly established.
Heraclitus, being a major tenant of the role of war,23 we can find
allusions to his conception of war in the very passage under
consideration.
A. War as a Political Principle
Heraclitus states that war is a political principle, by which the
human world has been ordered.24 This is the content of the famous
fragment 53:
19 See Laws I, 626c-d, the progressive reduction of war to stasis.
Applying the strife to the city, the village, the man, and the soul
of the man, the Athenian is said to “have made the argument more
clear by taking
it back again to its principle” (τν γρ λγον π' ρχν ρθς ναγαγν
σαφστερον ποησας). 20 See Farrar, “Putting History in Its Place,”
who shows that in Laws 3 and 4, Plato “uses Thucydides as a foil to
tease out his own very different notion of an interpretive
continuity informed by the paradeigmata of history” (35) in order
to prove against him that “all extant politics is like war : the
will to power at the expense of other” (52), making war a
touchstone for political analysis. 21 The expression is used for
the passage in which Thucydides rebuilds the beginning of Greek
societies (Thucydides, I, 2–19). 22 See, Laws 3, 678e2-7 (oblivion
of metallurgy), 678e9-679e4 (absence of enmity); and Weil,
“L’Archéologie” de Platon. 23 Miroslav Marcovich, Heraclitus :
Greek Text with a Short Commentary, (Sankt Augustin: Academia
Verlag, 2001), 130–157; G. S. Kirk, Heraclitus. The Cosmic
Fragments (Cambridge University Press, 1954), 237-262. 24 For a
recent survey on politics in the fragments of Heraclitus, see Jan
Maximilan Robitzsch, “Heraclitus’ Political Thought,” Apeiron 4/51
(2018): 405–26. Robitzsch states that “there is some direct
evidence that Heraclitus accorded a high value to political
thought” (406). See also Kurt Raaflaub,
“Shared Responsibility for the Common Good: Heraclitus, Early
Philosophy, and Political Thought,” in Heraklit Im Kontext, ed.
Enrica Fantino, Charlotte Schubert, and Kurt Sier (Berlin: De
Gruyter, 2017), 103–28; Konstantine Boudouris, “Heraclitus and the
Dialectical Conception of Politics,” in Ionian Philosophy, ed.
Konstantine Boudouris (Athens: Kardamitsa, 1989), 58–79; and
Antonio Capizzi, La Repubblica cosmica: appunti per una storia non
peripatetica della nascita della filosofia in Grecia (Rome:
Edizione dell’ Ateneo, 1982), 312-333. All these scholars highlight
the role of law and of B114 in the political thought of the
Ephesian, but they underrate the place of war and of B53, even if
its cosmological role
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
41
War is father of all (beings) and king of all, and so he renders
some gods, others men, he makes some slaves, others free.25
The image of the father combined with that of the king refers to
the two constitutive dimensions of the archè, “principle”: the
father is not only an origin, but also a cause; the king is the one
who gives orders, the ruler, the term thus refers to a hierarchical
order, to what guides the development of something. The fragment
proposes an image of the organization of the social world by war.
War divides beings into two categories: the gods and the humans,
the second group is in turn divided into two categories: free men
and slaves. This second division is a common one and it is easy to
understand its relation to war. For it is by war that the
relationship between free men and slaves comes to be: the winner
keeps his freedom, and the vanquished becomes his slave, so that
power determines who belongs to which category. War and the power
relationships it establishes thus structure the political
world.
I think a similar view may be found in the Laws at the end of
Clinias’ speech:
And if you look at the matter from this point of view, you will
find it practically true that our Cretan lawgiver ordained all our
legal usages, both public and private, with an eye to war, and that
he therefore charged us with the task of guarding our laws safely,
in the conviction that without victory in war nothing else, whether
possession or institution, is of the least value, but all the goods
of the vanquished fall into the hands of the victors.26
War is the guiding principle the lawgiver follows, because it is
the process by which victors and vanquished are distinguished.
Victors, as free men, dispose of the vanquished who become their
slaves, hence, the necessity for a city to be victorious in war in
order to establish
its dominion over the others, to benefit from their properties
(γαθ), and to avoid enslavement.
The difficulty arises with the first division, the one between gods
and humans. Two major hypotheses have been made: first, Heraclitus
refers here to the process of becoming a hero in war. Kirk notes
the proximity with fragment 24, 25 and 136 about the destiny of the
souls slain in war. In this perspective, Heraclitus would have
given a physical explanation of the difference between two kinds of
souls, as Kirk wrote: “souls of those slain in battle are ‘purer’
than those who are wasted away by illness. The reason must be that
the former are fiery, the latter watery.”27
is recognized. Such a political reading of Heraclitus seems to have
existed since Antiquity (see Diogene Laerce, IX, 5 and IX, 15).
Nevertheless, most modern interpreters consider these fragments to
be more “metaphysical” or cosmological than political. See Edward
Hussey, “Epistemology and Meaning in Heraclitus,” in Language and
Logos: Studies in Ancient Greek Philosophy Presented to G. E. L.
Owen, by Malcolm Schofield and Martha Craven Nussbaum (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1982), 33–59, note 14, 47. To Hussey,
“the extension [of political ideas found in some fragments] to a
geopolitical theory is unsupported by direct evidence.” 25
Heraclitus, D.K.B53; M29: Πλεμος πντων μν πατρ στι, πντων δ
βασιλες, κα τος μν θεος
δειξε τος δ νθρπους, τος μν δολους ποησε τος δ λευθρους. All texts
and translations of
Heraclitus, unless otherwise indicated, are by Miroslav Marchovich,
in Marcovich, Heraclitus : Greek Text with a Short Commentary. 26
Plato, Laws I, 626a-b: κα σχεδν νευρσεις οτω σκοπν τν Κρητν
νομοθτην, ς ες τν πλεμον
παντα δημοσ κα δ τ νμιμα μν ποβλπων συνετξατο, κα κατ τατα οτω
φυλττειν παρδωκε
τος νμους, ς τν λλων οδενς οδν φελος ν, οτε κτημτων οτ πιτηδευμτων,
ν μ τ
πολμ ρα κρατ τις· πντα δ τ τν νικωμνων γαθ τν νικντων γγνεσθαι. 27
Kirk, Heraclitus. The Cosmic Fragments, 247.
Pierre Ponchon
42
But it is not very clear, why the gods must be the dead. Moreover,
I think this explanation misses the central point of the argument,
which is not to give a physical description of two kinds of souls,
but a political explanation of the world order, or even, at the
very least, a cosmological one.
Therefore, I prefer the second hypothesis, which can be linked to
another fragment (B114). According to it, we must think that the
principle of differentiation between gods and humans is the same as
the one between free men and slaves, which is might. If war or
conflict reveals the gods, it is because it reveals the differences
of power:
Those who will speak with sense must rely on what is common to all,
as a city relies on its law, and much more firmly: for all human
laws are nourished by one law, the divine law; for it extends its
power as far as it will and is sufficient for all [human laws] and
still left over.28
We know by fragment 80 that war is one of the few things, with the
logos, which is said to
be common (ξυνν).29 The difference between human and divine nomoi,
a term which can be
translated as laws or customs, is here expressed in terms of κρτος
(power), as it happens in war. So, it seems to me very likely that
the divine law we are dealing with here is not only logos, but also
War as a principle of kratos, so that this fragment is a reference
to the political world ordering of B.53. Accordingly, the whole
fragment B53 presents the hierarchical structure of the political
world, human as divine, in a light that evokes the Athenians of the
Thucydides’ Melian dialogue:
For in no respect are we departing from men’s observances regarding
that which pertains to the divine or from their desires regarding
that which pertains to themselves, in aught that we demand or do.
For of the gods we hold the belief, and of men we know, that by a
necessity of their nature wherever they have power they always
rule. And so in our case since we neither enacted this law nor when
it was enacted were the first to use it, but found it in existence
and expect to leave it in existence for all time.30
I do not mean that Thucydides is influenced by Heraclitus31. The
question is very difficult, and probably no definitive proof can be
given. But we find here a similar way to put war as a principle of
a political order both human and divine. Here, too, the issue is a
nomos which applies both to men and gods, and that nomos is the
rule of the mighty, established in the first place by war.32
28 Heraclitus, D.K.B.114 (M23): ξν νωι λγοντας σχυρζεσθαι χρ τι
ξυνι πντων, κωσπερ νμωι
πλις κα πολ σχυροτρως τρφονται γρ πντες ο νθρπειοι νμοι π νς, το
θεου· κρατε γρ
τοσοτον κσον θλει κα ξαρκε πσι κα περιγνεται. 29 ξυνν is said about
logos (B2), war (B80), thought (το φρονειν, B113), and point on a
circle (B103). 30 Thuc., V, 105 : οδν γρ ξω τς νθρωπεας τν μν ς τ
θεον νομσεως τν δ ς σφς ατος
βουλσεως δικαιομεν πρσσομεν. γομεθα γρ τ τε θεον δξ, τ νθρπειν τε
σαφς δι παντς
π φσεως ναγκαας, ο ν κρατ, ρχειν. κα μες οτε θντες τν νμον οτε
κειμν πρτοι
χρησμενοι, ντα δ παραλαβντες κα σμενον ς αε καταλεψοντες χρμεθα ατ.
31 On this issue, see my paper “Thucydide, Héraclite et
l’archéologie du réalisme politique,” Dialogues d’histoire ancienne
45/2, no. 2 (2019): 113–45. 32 It is then one of the “rights or
claims in the matter of ruling and being ruled” the Athenian
Stranger describes in Laws 3, 690c, referring it to Pindar, as it
often happens in Plato (e.g., Gorgias, 484b, 488b). On this
passage, see infra.
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
43
Thus, Clinias supports the view we found in both Thucydides and
Heraclitus, who similarly consider war as a principle of political
order. Both of them refer to a nomos,33 valid for men and gods,
that consists in the rule of the mighty and is first and foremost
established by war.
B. War as a Cosmological Principle
Furthermore, the range of the principle overcomes the political
dimension and attains a more fundamental level. Heraclitus, in
fact, considers war and conflict as the principles of the
entire
reality. He states that war is common to all things (ξυνν), and is
the origin of what comes to be, specifically in fragment 80:
One must know that war is common and strife is justice and that all
things come to pass by strife and necessity.34
This fragment is more general than B53, because πντα is obviously a
neutral, which means “all the things,” whereas πντων in B53 is
rather a masculine, which applies mainly to
living beings. Moreover, the meaning of ξυνν is clearly
“universal,” that is “what must be applied to all.” Heraclitus uses
the same word for the universality of the logos (B2) and of the
divine law (B114). Therefore, we must think that B53 is simply an
exemplification (even if one of great importance) of the
universality of war as a principle. Just as on a cosmological level
all the natural beings and the world order (the cosmos) are
generated by war and strife, on a political level too, all the
social beings, including the gods, and the political order are
established by the same principles.35 War is an external principle
between things, whereas strife is an internal principle of things,
that is to say, according to the usual chiasmus structure of
Heraclitean fragments, war acts as a necessity which comes from
outside, while strife is something like justice, namely a principle
of internal structuring of the opposites that constitute each
thing. Polemos and eris (strife)36 are therefore appropriate
concepts for conceiving the world as the unity of opposites as a
whole and in each of its parts. All things are then the result of
the double action of an internal structuring through strife and of
an external opposition called war. Two main points can be drawn
from this.
Firstly, war and strife produce all things (γινμενα) and everything
that happens, because the tension of the opposites, which
constitutes the whole world and each thing, results from them.
Hence, Heraclitus condemns Homer because he wished the death of war
in the world,
33 That for Heraclitus polemos is a kind of law can be inferred
from B114, where the divine law described in the fragment is not
only the logos, but also war as a principle of kratos, so that this
fragment can be a reference to the ordering of the political world
in B.53. 34 Heraclitus, D.K.80; M28: εδναι χρ τν πλεμον ντα ξυνν κα
δκην ριν κα γινμενα πντα κατ'
ριν κα χρεν. 35 Robitzsch explains that “it is a mistake to
separate Heraclitus’ political thought from his cosmological
thought insofar as a neat separation of these two areas of
philosophy is anachronistic” (“Heraclitus Political Thought,” 406).
36 Heraclitus prefers the word eris and does not does not use
stasis in this latter sense. The word appears in B6, with its
meaning of rest. In DKB125, Heraclitus explains that Kykeon (a
drink made of water, barley, and other substances), is set apart
(δισταται) if it is not stirred, which probably means that movement
is necessary for a thing to become one. For another construction
and lecture of this particular fragment, see Sergueï Nikititch
Mouraviev, ed., Héraclite d’Ephèse, les vestiges. 3 B i. Les
fragments du livre d’Héraclite Troisième partie Recensio 3
Fragmenta Heraclitea B.1 (Sankt Augustin: Academia Verlag, 2006),
F125, 316. It is nevertheless interesting to note 1—that a kind of
strife is at stake in the very unity of the kykeon but it should be
seen in κινομενος rather than in δισταται; and 2—that for
Heraclitus the term stasis and its derivatives mean exclusively
rest and separation, and not strife or unity of opposites.
Pierre Ponchon
44
which to the Ephesian would mean the death of all things (A22).37
Secondly, according to B80, justice itself is strife, which
probably means that it is the result of a conflict, of some kind of
conflicting negotiations. Justice supposes an effective opposition
between two entities, but, just like war in B53, it is also a
principle of order. Yet I think these are precisely two points
Plato is trying to avoid. For him, justice should not be linked to
strife, because, as I will demonstrate, this contains the risk of
stasis, civil war. That is why war is singled out at the beginning
of the Laws: justice is a matter of friendship and peace
(628a)—Heraclitus’ point of view has to be inverted.
But, before going into a detailed examination of Plato’s argument,
I would like to stress another passage of the Laws in which
Heraclitus’ views on war seem to be at stake at a cosmological
level. The Athenian argues that another kind of conflict can be
considered as the origin of kosmos. Indeed, in the tenth book of
the Laws, the question reappears in an important passage. The
Athenian Stranger endeavors to fight against different kinds of
atheism. During the refutation of its third type, the
corruptibility of gods by the means of prayers and gifts, he
emphasizes a point already made:
For seeing that we have agreed among ourselves that the heaven is
full of many things that are good, and of the opposite kind also,
and that those not good are the more numerous, such a battle (μχη),
we affirm, is undying, and needs a wondrous watchfulness.38
A kind of eternal war seems to be taking place in the cosmos.39
This war between good and evil takes the form of a battle, that is
of a conflict ever “in act” and athanatos, which means that it will
never cease. The mentioned agreement refers to an earlier passage:
between the refutation of the second and of the third form of
atheism, the Athenian stranger presents a
kind of mythical account (μθων τι τινν, 903b) which aims to
persuade the atheists that the gods do care for humans. As Trevor
Saunders40 has proven, this short passage is full of allusions to
elements of Heraclitus’ doctrine. In particular, we can read:
37 See Mouraviev, who suggests the following reconstruction from
Aristotle, EE H 1, 1235a25; Plut. De
Isid. 370d, Numen. fr 52 des P.; Simpl. In categ. p. 412, 22 K:
ξηπτηται κα ποισας· ‘ς <ρις> κ τε
θεν κα νθρπων πλοιτο’ [Σ 107]· ς γρ οχοιτο πντα εχεται. ο γρ
Αρμονην ν γνοιτο… “He (Homer) also errs when he writes: ‘May strife
disappear from among gods and men!’ For he prays for the
destruction of all: Harmonia would not have been born… War is the
principle of genesis.” (F 9A
= D.K. A22 = Marcovich 28c2-6, 37). Contra: according to Marcovich,
Heraclitus : Greek Text with a Short Commentary, 131, war is only
“one among many others conditions of the unity of opposites, and is
not the cogent reason of that unity.” 38 Plato, Laws X, 906a : πειδ
γρ συγκεχωρκαμεν μν ατος εναι μν τν ορανν πολλν μεστν
γαθν, εναι δ κα τν ναντων, πλεινων δ τν μ, μχη δ, φαμν, θνατς στιν
τοιατη κα
φυλακς θαυμαστς δεομνη 39 On this very controversial passage, see
Gabriela Roxana Carone, “Teleology and Evil in Laws 10,” The Review
of Metaphysics 48, no. 2 (1994): 275–298; John Dillon, The Roots of
Platonism. The Origins and Chief Features of a Philosophical
Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), chapter 2
“Monist and Dualist Tendencies in Platonism before Plotinus,”
24–34. Since Antiquity, there have been two main interpretations.
According to the first, supported mainly by Plutarchus (De Iside et
Oriside, 370b-d and 370f-371a), who in the same passage also
mentions Heraclitus B53, Plato establishes a kind of dualism.
According to the second one, supported since Speusippus by a large
majority of ancient Platonists and by most of the moderns following
Cherniss, Plato recognizes only one principle. I think that this
question is not a very important one for my purpose, if Plato only
refutes Heraclitus’ thesis of the struggle of opposites. He is
simply trying to show that the ordering of world is not the result
of war as such, but the effect of the causal power of good. 40
Trevor J. Saunders, “Penology and Eschatology in Plato’s Timaeus
and Laws,” The Classical Quarterly 23/2 (November 1973): 232–44;
241-ff.
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
45
Since our King saw that all actions involve soul, and contain much
good and much evil, […] He designed a location for each of the
parts, wherein it might secure the victory of goodness in the Whole
and the defeat of evil most completely, easily, and well.41
In this context of Heraclitean allusions, I suggest that the
reference to “our king” could allude to B53, and therefore to
polemos,42 since victory and defeat imply war. It is precisely the
same eternal war between good and evil, we were just talking
about.43 But Plato here reverses the meaning of Heraclitus’
fragment: the true king, “our king,” is not polemos, but the one
who ensures the victory of good over evil. The same structure can
be found in the opening of book 1, where Plato writes that the
“victory we mentioned of a State over itself is not one of
the best things but one of those which are necessary” (τ νικν, ς
οικεν, ατν ατν πλιν
οκ ν τν ρστων λλ τν ναγκαων, 628d). Here too, victory is necessary,
not war. Even if the battle is “undying,” the king ensures the
victory of the good, because only this victory can generate world
order. Thus, the power of the good and not the action of war is the
real organizing principle, and it has to be understood as a mixture
of persuasion and violence.44
Finally, it is important to note that the meaning of the term
“necessity” is at stake here. In B80, war is said to be a
“necessary process.” But, according to Plato, necessity, even
conceived on the model of the constraint of war, is a real
cosmological principle45 neither of the natural world nor of the
political order. From this perspective, the opposition discussed
here between mere necessity and the best is essential. For Plato,
the ordering of the world is the product of goodness, and not (pace
Thucydides and Heraclitus) of war or strength, not even modeled
after necessity.
III. The Political Refutation of Clinias’ Argument
Once some of the roots of Clinias’ speech are identified, it is
then possible to better understand the implications of its
refutation by the Athenian stranger. The main point is to question
the value of political conflict in the process of becoming a city.
It recovers two slightly different issues that are nevertheless
articulated. On the one hand, it refers to the origins of cities:
Is violence and political conflict the process by which a city
comes to be structured?46 This question is at stake in the third
book of the Laws and Plato clearly answers
41 Plato, Laws X, 904a-b: πειδ κατεδεν μν βασιλες μψχους οσας τς
πρξεις πσας κα
πολλν μν ρετν ν ατας οσαν, πολλν δ κακαν, […]μηχανσατο πο κεμενον
καστον τν μερν
νικσαν ρετν, ττωμνην δ κακαν, ν τ παντ παρχοι μλιστ ν κα στα κα
ριστα. 42 Even if Saunders, “Penology and Eschatology in Plato’s
Timaeus and Laws”, p. 241 refers rather to B52 (and the child as a
chess player). 43 For other similarities between Plato’s Laws and
Heraclitus, see Charles H. Kahn, “A New Look at Heraclitus”,
American Philosophical Quarterly, 1964, 189–203., p. 198. 44 On
this topic, see André Laks, “Legislation and Demiurgy: On the
Relationship between Plato’s ‘Republic’ and ‘Laws’”, Classical
Antiquity 9, no. 2 (1990): 209–229, p. 226–229. The author shows
that, besides the action by persuasion (Timaeus, 48a), compulsion
or violence is needed in the action of the Nous on Necessity
(Timaeus, 35a). Nevertheless, one can imagine that this compulsion
ultimately relates, according to the picture of Laws 3 (690a-d), to
the archè of the wise upon what is without understanding, see
infra. Therefore, as a kind of archè, it is different from war, but
insofar as some kind of violence or constraint is involved, it can
be compared to war. 45 See in Phedon, 99b the opposition between
the “cause” (aitia) and “the thing without which the cause could
never be a cause”. In a similar way, mere necessity is only a
condition, whereas the true necessity is the conditional necessity
of the best. 46 See the restatement of Thrasymachus’ argument in
Laws 4, 714a-sqq, and Laws 8, 832c.
Pierre Ponchon
46
that it is not the case: only a certain kind of bad city is based
on war.47 On the other hand, it refers to the purpose the lawgivers
must pursue. Are, as Heraclitus and Thucydides put it, war and
conflict the very leading principles of the polis, and of political
order? We have then the two major meanings of archè: the starting
point and the purpose guiding a process.
In order to demonstrate that the real constitution of a city has to
be conceived from peace and friendship, Plato puts forward a
twofold argument.
A. Polemos and Stasis
First, he builds a new connection between war and civil strife.
Using the regressive method, he shows that the same pattern is at
stake in every stage of the human community, from psychological to
international level, so that if war and enmity are the founding
relationship between cities, the same hostility and conflict must
be seen as principles inside cities, that is, between parts of the
cities (village, house), as much as between families and inside
families (between individuals) and even inside individuals.48
Clinias summarizes this point as follows:
[…] you have made the argument clearer by taking it back again to
its starting point; whereby you will the more easily discover the
justice of our recent statement that, in the mass, all men are both
publicly and privately the enemies of all, and individually also
each man is his own enemy.49
Therefore, there is continuity between cities and individuals:
conflict and enmity are present at every stage. But this universal
war of all against all involves changing the nature of the
conflict, turning polemos into stasis. Indeed, this change is
formalized later in the dialogue, namely for the sake of the
ethical argument (629c), but is implicitly contained in the
reversal of the political argument, beginning at 626e7. From this
point, Plato displays parallelism between family and city, in which
the first one is a paradigm for the second one. But the pattern of
conflict inside a family is very different from the pattern of
conflict between cities. Family is the place of stasis,50 not of
war, properly speaking, so that “taking the argument back in the
reverse direction” involves understanding polemos from stasis and
not stasis from polemos. Civil war becomes the model from which
violence and conflict in political relationship must be understood.
That is to say that stasis plays a more fundamental role in
understanding the nature and function of conflict in the political
process of setting up cities than war does. But it is only a
negative role: stasis is what has to be avoided whereas war was
what one had to prepare for. Friendship (philia) and peace (eirènè)
must necessarily overcome the potential risk
47 The main argument is that war is forgotten in the new beginning
that follows the flood, due to material causes such as ignorance of
metals and weapons and psycho-political causes such as the natural
philia existing between scattered men (Laws 3, 678e-679c). 48 If
this conflicting multiplicity in an individual is not only, as it
seems, the strife between soul and body, then it is implicitly
suggested here that the soul can be divided and has real parts and
not only states of mind. On this controversial issue, see
Christopher Bobonich, Plato’s Utopia Recast: His Later Ethics and
Politics (Oxford: Clarendon press, 2002), 216–292. Bobonich argues
that in the Laws, “the soul is neither bipartite, nor tripartite,
but unitary” (259). See also the critical remarks of André Laks,
Médiation et coercition: pour une lecture des ‘Lois’ de Platon,
(Villeneuve d’Ascq: Presses universitaires du Septentrion, 2005),
85-92; Rachana Kamtekar, “Speaking with the Same Voice as Reason:
Personification in Plato’s Psychology,” Oxford Studies in Ancient
Philosophy 31 (2006): 167–202. 49 Plato, Laws 1, 626d: τν γρ λγον
π' ρχν ρθς ναγαγν σαφστερον ποησας, στε ον
νευρσεις τι νυνδ φ' μν ρθς ρρθη τ πολεμους εναι πντας πσιν δημοσ
τε, κα δ
κστους ατος σφσιν ατος. 50 See Nicole Loraux, “La guerre dans la
famille,” Clio 5 (1997): 21–62; Giorgio Agamben, La Guerre civile:
pour une théorie politique de la stasis, trans. Joël Gayraud
(Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 2015), 28-29.
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
47
of stasis and of “a war against the self within each of us” (626e).
They thus become the guiding principles of the lawgiver.51 This
change alters our understanding of the whole political process,
because stasis is clearly a principle of dissociation, while war
could be regarded as a process of unification, binding friends
together against enemies, as in the case Clinias, or as a principle
of ordering, as in the case of Heraclitus.52 Therefore, with
stasis, the power of dissension is greater than the power of unity,
which is not the case with war as a common aim.53
B. Necessity and Good
With this distinction in mind, we can now turn to the second part
of the argument: the withdrawal of conflict in the political
structuring of state. The argument is based on an analogy between
the unity of a family and that of a city. The Athenian stranger
imagines a conflict inside a household between the worst and the
best. Here the problem is not so much who the winners are, but
rather how the winners capitalize on their victory (627b). The
Athenian stranger distinguishes two different ways of emerging from
the crisis: (1) by a war inside the household (627c-d), that is by
pure violence or (2) by resorting to a judge, that is to say by
instituting laws. In the passage, it is not clear whether this is
an alternative or if the latter follows and achieves the former.
The judge is, in any case, playing the role of a mediator and he
has three means at his disposal: the destruction of the worst part
of the family, its enslavement, or a kind of reconciliation under
the authority of the law:
Athenian: Which of the two [sc. judges] would be the better—a judge
who destroyed all the wicked among them and charged the good to
govern themselves, or one who made the good members govern and,
while allowing the bad to live, made them submit willingly to be
governed? And there is a third judge we must mention (third and
best in point of merit),—if indeed such a judge can be found,—who
in dealing with a single divided family will destroy none of them
but reconcile them and succeed, by enacting laws for them, in
securing among them thenceforward permanent friendliness. Clinias:
A judge and lawgiver of that kind would be far the best. Athenian:
But mark this: his aim, in the laws he enacted for them, would be
the opposite of war.54
Note that the first two judges act according to the rules of war,
as they are mentioned in Thucydides or Heraclitus: destruction or
enslavement is the destiny of the defeated. In a sense, the judge
is only legalizing what violence has established, so that the
difference between
51 On this difference between Plato and Thucydides, see Mara, The
Civic Conversations of Thucydides and Plato, p. 174–176 and
256–259. 52 See Brancacci, “Giustizia, guerra e guerra civile nelle
Leggi di Platone,” 1079–1085; and Bertrand, “De la stasis dans les
cités platoniciennes,” 217. 53 The same use of the distinction
between polemos and stasis is at stake in the argument of complete
virtue in the following pages of Book 1. Stasis is the name of the
greatest threat to a city, it is what complete virtue aims to
avoid. 54 Plato, Laws, 627e: {ΑΘ.} Πτερος ον μενων, στις τος μν
πολσειενατν σοι κακο, τος δ
βελτους ρχειν ατος ατν προστξειεν, δε ς ν τος μν χρηστος ρχειν, τος
χερους δ' σας
ζν ρχεσθαι κντας ποισειεν; τρτον δ που δικαστν πρς ρετν επωμεν, ε
τις εη τοιοτος στις
παραλαβν συγγνειαν μαν διαφερομνην, μτε πολσειεν μηδνα, διαλλξας δ
ες τν πλοιπον
χρνον, νμους ατος θες, πρς λλλους παραφυλττειν δναιτο στε εναι
φλους. {ΚΛ.} Μακρ
μενων γγνοιτ' ν τοιοτος δικαστς τε κα νομοθτης. {ΑΘ.} Κα μν
τοναντον γε πρς πλεμον
ν βλπων ατος τος νμους διανομοθετο.
Pierre Ponchon
48
the first two judges is after all very slight. The only real judge
in the full sense of the term is the third one, and he acts more
like a lawgiver than like a simple mediator. Moreover, he uses
other principles that are not based on war, but “on the opposite of
war,” that are “peace” and “friendly feelings.” And yet, in the
case of the household, it is obvious that this third judge is far
better, because between brothers neither destruction, nor hate, nor
such an inequality as the one that exists in enslavement, should
exist because of the natural ties that link them.
The analogy aims then to show that the same situation applies to
cities too. The good lawgiver is the one whose laws allow the
citizens to live in friendship and peace rather than under the
control of the winning part of the city:
Athenian: And would anyone prefer that the citizens should be
obliged to devote their attention to external enemies after
internal concord had been secured by the destruction of one section
and the victory of their opponents rather than after the
establishment of friendship and peace by terms of conciliation?
Clinias: everyone would prefer the latter alternative for his own
State rather than the former55.
This particular passage shows (1) that civil war (stasis) is
logically prior to external war (polemos) for a city; (2) that it
represents a greater threat to its unity, because it is an internal
one, so that the settlement of this question is a condition for the
existence of the city that is logically prior to the victory in
war; and (3) that external war, that is the coalition against an
external threat, cannot be the cause of the unity of the state, but
only, at best, a secondary means to enforce this unity.
Neither war, nor civil war is then what the lawgiver looks at when
he ordains his laws. The former is only a secondary means, whereas
the latter is what has to be banished if a city is to be made. The
logic of war, that is the rule of the mighty, is then expelled from
the setting up of cities. If, then, war is not the natural state of
civic society, the basic political relationship between citizens
cannot be enmity or hostility. It must be friendship and
philophrosunè (628c). City is not the outcome of a conflict between
factions in which the mighty rule the others, but the outcome of
peace and law. Therefore, political philosophy is a matter of law
more than a matter of power, that is, the removal of conflict
rather than its expression.
The Athenian stranger will return to this topic later in the
text.56 But in this beginning, a last passage completes the
explanation of the withdrawal of war from the political sphere
strictly speaking. Comparing the judge to a doctor, the Athenian
displays how the judge is to be considered only as a lesser
evil:
Moreover, it would seem that the victory we mention of a State over
itself is not one of the best things but one of those which are
necessary. For imagine a man supposing that a human body was best
off when it was sick and purged with physic, while never giving a
thought to the case of the body that needs no physic at all!
Similarly, with regard to the well-being of a State or an
55 Plato, Laws, 628b: {ΑΘ.} Πτερα δ πολομνων α τν τρων ερνην τς
στσεως γενσθαι,
νικησντων δ ποτρων, δξαιτ' ν τις, μλλον φιλας τε κα ερνης π
διαλλαγν γενομνης, οτω τος
ξωθεν πολεμοις προσχειν νγκην εναι τν νον; {ΚΛ.} Οτω πς ν θλοι
πρτερον 'κενως περ
τν ατο γγνεσθαι πλιν. On the difficulty of this sentence, see
Jean-Marie Bertrand, “De la stasis dans les cités platoniciennes”,
p.218, note 80. 56 See Laws 4, 714b-715b, where Plato recalls the
theory of Thrasymachus in Book 1 of the Republic, establishing a
link between the political realism of Clinias or Thucydides (the
“state of war” between cities) and that of Thrasymachus (the
conflict within cities). Both are based on the rule of the
strongest (714e).
War as a Principle? Plato against Thucydides and Heraclitus
49
individual, that man will never make a genuine statesman who pays
attention primarily and solely to the needs of foreign warfare, nor
will he make a finished lawgiver unless he designs his war
legislation for peace rather than his peace legislation for
war.57
By suggesting that the judge is a kind of doctor, the Athenian
points out that the logic of war only reaches a city when it is
ill, that is why ending a civil conflict is like curing a disease.
This is then a second-rate action which assumes that the city has
already had some sort of unity before splitting into factions. In
this sense, a state could only exist if stasis (the necessity at
stake here is a condition) is expelled, but the way to contain
stasis can vary depending on the means used. The best state, then,
is not one that is structured only in order to avoid civil unrest
through force and violence (as the Spartan do with helots, who are
arbitrarily kept in submission only by sheer violence), but one
that allows the very threat of civil war to be expelled using law,
justice and friendship. But laws and justice cannot be thought of
as the outcome of a conflict (as they were for Heraclitus or
Thucydides), instead they have to be modeled on the complete virtue
as the following ethical argument will show. We now understand why
the Athenian argues that war cannot be the principle of legislation
for peace but the opposite is true. He thinks of the very logic of
war, of the kind of order it can establish that is the rule of the
strongest. This kind of order, of archè, is mentioned in the famous
text on the “rights or claims in the matter of ruling and being
ruled, alike in States, large or small,
and in household” (ξιματα δ δ το τε ρχειν κα ρχεσθαι […] ν τε
πλεσιν μεγλαις κα
σμικρας ν τε οκαις σατως, Laws 3, 690a), where the parallelism
between state and household echoes our passage. The fifth of these
rights is “that the stronger should rule and
the weaker should be ruled” (τ κρεττονα μν ρχειν, τν ττω δ ρχεσθαι,
690b). It is the principle that structures the political world for
both Thucydides and Heraclitus, but clearly not for Plato who
reminds us that the true law is based on the sixth and most
important right: the rule of the wise man over the man without
understanding. Thus, conflict and violence cannot be what the
lawgiver looks at when he enacts its laws, because the kind of
structure they establish does not confer on the city the unity
necessary for its maintenance. The rule of the strongest, which
places hostility and violence as principles, is not what gives the
city its unity, but what perpetuates its division, as has been
shown with the image of the judge. Therefore, the victory of a city
over itself is not a matter of good, but of mere necessity (628d):
it occurs only once stasis appears and in the temporary absence of
law. Violence and conflict are on the side of necessity as Clinias
reminds us when calling the rule of the strongest “a
truly compulsory (μλα γε ναγκαον) form of rule” (690b). Only
science—or its second-best, namely law—is on the side of the
good.58 Violence has to be submitted to science and cannot be the
source of law. Conflict, then, cannot be the principle of political
order because (1) stasis is prior to war, that is, conflict is a
process of dissociation and not of association; and (2) conflict is
a matter of necessity and not of good and it is obvious that the
true lawgiver designs his legislation according to the good.
57 Plato, Laws, 628d: κα δ κα τ νικν, ς οικεν, ατν ατν πλιν οκ ν τν
ρστων λλ τν
ναγκαων· μοιον ς ε κμνον σμα ατρικς καθρσεως τυχν γοτ τις ριστα
πρττειν ττε, τ δ
μηδ τ παρπαν δεηθντι σματι μηδ προσχοι τν νον, σατως δ κα πρς πλεως
εδαιμοναν
κα διτου διανοομενος οτω τις οτ' ν ποτε πολιτικς γνοιτο ρθς, πρς τ
ξωθεν πολεμικ
ποβλπων μνον κα πρτον, οτ' ν νομοθτης κριβς, ε μ χριν ερνης τ
πολμου νομοθετο
μλλον τν πολεμικν νεκα τ τς ερνης. 58 On the compulsory and
sometimes coercive dimension of the law caught between science,
violence and persuasion, see André Laks, “Legislation and Demiurgy:
On the Relationship between Plato’s ‘Republic’ and ‘Laws’,”
228–230. On the inevitability of violence in laws, see Bertrand,
“De la stasis dans les cités platoniciennes,” 223–224.
Pierre Ponchon
50
Conclusion
In this political dialogue, like in a metaphysical dialogue such as
Theaetetus (152e), the inquiry can only begin once an initial (and
in part Heraclitean) hypothesis has been rejected. In both cases,
the argument proceeds as follows: a first radical hypothesis, which
encounters the favor of both ancient philosophers and “modern”
thinkers in the wake of the sophists, must be rationally discounted
before the real archè can appear. The only difference is that the
metaphysical dialogues focus on the flux theory, whereas the Laws
are mainly concerned with war and the rule of the strongest.
The opening of the Laws is essential, not primarily as a theory of
virtues, but as a political refutation of war as a principle. Plato
makes a choice within a political alternative that entails the
whole philosophical examination of legislation. In a sense, his
polemical target is twofold because he wants not only to dismiss
political realism but also (and perhaps more importantly) its
metaphysical basis (namely its conception of human nature and of
necessity); and this double critique is what later allows him to
base his political philosophy on alternative principles. Therefore,
in order to understand the foundation of Plato’s political thought
in the Laws, it is important not to underestimate the role of this
refutation in the general structure of the book. In other words,
the issue of war is not a prelude to the prelude: it is the
introduction of a topic that reappears periodically throughout the
dialogue59 and culminates in the cosmic war of good and evil.
The refutation of this kind of political realism and of its
metaphysical roots relies on two arguments subtly connected in the
beginning of the Laws: the reduction of war to stasis involving the
denial of any form of associative power within it, and the
distinction between necessity and good, which leads to the
dismissal of conflict as a political principle. Political
philosophy cannot be, as was the case for Thucydides and
Heraclitus, the negotiation of conflicts implying violence, but has
to be thought as the art of “making citizens better” (Gorgias,
515c, 521a), that is, as the study of what “is required for
achieving, in part at least, the human good.”60 This was a major
turn in political philosophy, at least until Machiavelli.
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